Ethical Sourcing

We seek to work with suppliers that source their products in a manner that protects workers' human rights, workers' health and safety, and the environment.

Supplier Code of Conduct

Suppliers providing us with Staples® brand products are required to comply with our Supplier Code of Conduct (pdf). We periodically audit supplier factories to ensure compliance using independent third party auditors. While we do not require the many hundreds of vendors who offer products for sale at Staples to comply with our Supplier Code of Conduct, we reserve the right to end our relationship with a vendor at any time if we discover that they are not sourcing their products in an ethical manner.

Factory Auditing

When seeking a new supplier of Staples® brand products, we pre–screen factories to ensure that our requirements for cost, quality, capacity, and on–time delivery can be met. We also work with independent third party auditing firms to conduct quality and social accountability audits of these factories. Factories located outside of the United States manufacturing products for sale in the United States must also pass a security screening.

Factories that do not meet our social accountability audit requirements are required to implement timely corrective action to resolve the violations discovered. We conduct several additional audits of factories with violations to measure their progress toward meeting corrective action. While we strive to work with factories to improve workplace conditions, we will end our relationship with factories that fail to make progress over time. More detailed information about our supplier responsibility program is available in the ethics section of our 2006 Staples Soul Report.

• Ethical Conduct
• Supplier Responsibility
• Staples Soul Main

• Code of Ethics (PDF)
• Supplier Code of Conduct (PDF)
• Ethics Section - 2006 Staples Soul Report (PDF)
• 2006 Staples Soul Report (PDF)

• Corporate Governance